Baseball changes with the times

July 6, 2014

Two years ago, I journeyed to the Boston area and took a couple tours of Fenway Park, one with my mission trip team I spent most of the week with and the other with my dad. I also got to experience a Red Sox game and experience those traditions.

While touring Fenway Park, I saw and heard about how the ballpark had changed over the years - from the original ticket booths that became memorials for World Series championships and appearances, to the wooden seats and the Green Monster in left field, snippets of Red Sox history and of Fenway Park itself.

Even as stadiums such as Fenway Park and Wrigley Field, the oldest stadiums in Major League Baseball, have stood the test of time, the great American pastime has gone through many changes.

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Many of these changes are obvious, such as the integration of the sport by Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby in 1947, teams and stadiums changing names and locations, the American League implementing a designated hitter and now today's expanded instant replay - the latter much to the chagrin of baseball purists.

What about some of the changes to the game of baseball that might not be as obvious to a casual baseball fan?

A pair of former MLB draftees have some insight. Both Mark Stephens and Sid Bream have sons named Austin on the roster of the Charles Town Cannons of the Valley Baseball League.

Bream, who was a second-round draft pick of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1981 and also played for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Atlanta Braves and Houston Astros in his 12-year career, offered two reasons on how the game had changed.

"Attitudes and the way ballplayers condition," Bream said. "Back when I was playing, weights were a taboo. Now we are into plyometrics and different types of conditioning that enhances the baseball swing. We didn't know a lot about that stuff back then, and those conditioning reasons are why you are seeing littler guys hitting the opposite way for home runs at times.

"The attitudes have affected the game negatively. There are great ambassadors of the game, but there are some that think they are the top dog. They have to understand that the fans are there helping pay their salaries and need to make sure that they take care of them."

The aforementioned changes by Bream only scratch the surface on what has changed in the big leagues.

Pitching has become more of a prominent aspect of the game over the last few years, especially with the rising number of no-hitters and perfect games that have been thrown by starting pitchers. The approach of these players who take the hill is much different than when both Stephens, who was drafted in the 17th round by the Milwaukee Brewers, and Bream were playing.

The common trend that has happened is that the knuckleball, a pitch that was thrown much more frequently and has had pitchers who were throwing into their 40s using it, has become an archaic pitch that is only being thrown by R.A. Dickey, who won the Cy Young award in 2012 as a New York Met and currently pitches for the Toronto Blue Jays.

"We had Tom Candiotti, Tim Wakefield, and I started off facing both Phil and Joe Niekro, so I saw a few knuckleballs during my time. But we also had Nolan Ryan, Rob Dibble and Randy Myers who could also throw top 90s and even hit 100 miles an hour," Bream said. "What took place back then was that you had more pitchers instead of throwers. Today, we have throwers in a sense that they don't know where it's going across the plate. It could be over the middle of the plate or on a corner. They are not like a Roger Clemens, who could throw the ball inside and outside whenever they wanted to and then throw the breaking ball."

"The big difference from a pitching standpoint was that the average speed was about 89 miles an hour," Stephens said. "Now it is about 93-94, and everybody has a guy that can throw it 100.

"What I attribute that to is more core training, more weighted-ball training, the ability to take video and break it down frame by frame and slow it down, more research, more kinesiology, and just more information and technology. That's the biggest difference I see. Guys are stronger and faster than when I played."

Not only has the speed of pitches been a major change, but also the specialization of pitching roles has been in existence. Roles such as a middle reliever, set-up man and closer were just starting to come about around the time Bream was in the majors.

"You still saw guys that would throw a lot of pitches to complete a ballgame, but the specific roles were just a pioneer experiment," Bream said. "Nowadays, teams will have a pitcher for the seventh inning to set up a closer. When you see a pitcher that can throw 100-plus pitches and then have guys that can shut it down late as well, that's just a wise thing to do."

When it comes to stadiums, there are notable changes beyond just the high prices of the stadium food and drink and even technology involving scoreboards and retractable roofs.

The field surface of many ballparks have gone back to real grass. Only Rogers Centre and Tropicana Field, the home stadiums for the Blue Jays and Tampa Bay Rays, respectively, continue to use AstroTurf.

This was not the case for many of the stops Bream made during his time in the majors.

"Most of the ballparks we played on in the east had the AstroTurf," he said. "Philadelphia (Veterans Stadium), Pittsburgh (Three Rivers Stadium), Cincinnati (Riverfront Stadium), Montreal (Olympic Stadium), Houston (Astrodome) all had it. It was that bad AstroTurf that when your foot dug in and wouldn't move, your knee would. That's how I hurt myself as far as my knee is concerned.

"I still love natural grass. It takes a lot of work to make it beautiful, but it is easy to play on and still the way to go as far as baseball is concerned."

As baseball has gone through the dead-ball and steroid eras and into the present day, many things have changed. Whether the change occurred on the field, in the weight rooms or even how scouting reports and analyses that go into the sabermetrics of the game have been altered, one thing will remain the same:

I still thoroughly enjoy baseball and always want to experience that feeling of what it is like being in a ballpark watching a Major League game over and over again.